PLANO, Texas and HANNOVER, Germany, April 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Industry Automation Division and a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services, today announced the next big breakthrough in digital product development with synchronous technology, the PLM industry's first-ever history-free, feature-based modeling technology, that provides users with up to 100 times faster design experience than ever before.

Launched via a global webcast in conjunction with Hannover Fair, Siemens PLM Software's new patent-pending technology combines the best of constraint-driven techniques with direct modeling, and is being integrated into the company's next versions of NXTM and Solid Edge(R) software.

"Siemens recognized the huge potential of synchronous technology during the due diligence process of acquiring UGS," said Anton Huber, CEO, Siemens Industry Automation Division. "Knowing that the digital model is at the heart of our shared vision to unify the product and production lifecycles, we have worked together to accelerate this breakthrough in CAD technology. The digital model impacts every phase of the PLM process and is key to delivering innovation faster than ever before. This technology will fundamentally change the way manufacturers design products and enable them to accelerate their innovation process, ultimately driving increases in top line revenue."

"This new synchronous technology is indeed a breakthrough," said Jack Beeckman, PLM manager, Liebert Corp. "It marks a new era in modeling that allows an engineer the freedom to be an engineer. With an instantaneous modeling experience, this is going to change the way people think about using CAD. More importantly it's going to change the way CAD enables them to think about 'what' they want to model, and not 'how' they want to model."

First-Ever History-Free, Feature-Based Modeling

The technology is the first-ever design solution that simultaneously synchronizes geometry and rules through a new decision-making inference engine. It accelerates innovation in four key areas:

-- Fast idea capture: Synchronous technology captures ideas as fast as the
user thinks them, with up to 100 times faster design experience.
Designers can devote more time to innovation with new techniques that
provide the efficiency of parametric dimension-modeling without the
computational overhead of pre-planned dependencies. The
technology defines optionally persistent dimensions, parameters and
design rules at time of creation or edit, without the overhead of an
ordered history.
-- Fast design changes: The technology automates the implementation of
planned or unplanned design changes to seconds versus hours thorough
unparalleled ease of editing, regardless of design origination, with or
without the presence of a history tree.
-- Improved multi-CAD reuse: The technology allows users to reuse data
from other CAD systems without remodeling. Users can succeed in a
multi-CAD environment with a fast, flexible system that enables them to
edit other CAD system data faster than they can in the original system,
regardless of the design methodology. A technique called
"suggestive selection" automatically infers the function of various
design elements without the need for feature or constraint definitions.
This increases design reuse and OEM/supplier efficiency.
-- New user experience: The technology provides a new user interaction
experience that simplifies CAD and makes 3D as easy to use as 2D. The
interaction paradigm merges historically independent 2D and 3D
environments, providing the robustness of a mature 3D modeler with the
ease of 2D. New inference technology automatically infers common
constraints and executes typical commands based on cursor position.
This makes design tools simple to learn and use for occasional users,
driving downstream use to manufacturing engineering and the shop floor.

"While there have been important advances in 3D design technology over the years, designers have not been able to create persistent features without the computational overhead needed to re-compute models from the construction history," said Chuck Grindstaff, executive vice president of Products, Siemens PLM Software. "Traditional parametric modeling serially applies rules to geometry, helping to automate planned change but not addressing unanticipated engineering changes. History-less modeling concentrates on geometry in an unconstrained manner, but sacrifices intelligence and intent. Direct editing minimizes the need to understand a complex history but does not address features.

"Our new synchronous technology incorporates the best of constrained and unconstrained techniques to deal with change in an extremely powerful and efficient manner. Applying the right technique to the job at hand, enables dimension-driven modeling to reach its full potential, generating tremendous productivity gains over traditional methods."

"Synchronous technology breaks through the architectural barrier inherent in a history-based modeling system," said Dr. Ken Versprille, PLM Research Director, CPDA. "Its ability to recognize current geometry conditions and localize dependencies in real time, allows synchronous technology to solve for model changes without the typical replay of the full construction history from the point of edit. Depending on model complexity and how far back in the history that edit occurs, users will see dramatic performance gains. A 100 times speed improvement could be a conservative estimate."

Availability

The patent-pending technology was jointly developed between Siemens PLM Software's NX and Solid Edge organizations. Siemens PLM Software's synchronous technology will be implemented in the next versions of both Solid Edge and NX as a proprietary application layer built on its D-Cubed(TM) and Parasolid(R) software. The next versions are scheduled for launch on May 21 at the annual Siemens PLM Software Analyst and Media Conference in Boston.

Siemens PLM Software, a business unit of the Siemens Industry Automation Division, is a leading global provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) software and services with 4.6 million licensed seats and 51,000 customers worldwide. Headquartered in Plano, Texas, Siemens PLM Software's open enterprise solutions enable a world where organizations and their partners collaborate through Global Innovation Networks to deliver world-class products and services. For more information on Siemens PLM Software products and services, visit
www.siemens.com/plm.

About the Siemens Industry Automation Division

The Siemens Industry Automation Division (Nuremberg), a division of the Siemens Industry Sector, is a worldwide leader in the fields of automation systems, low-voltage switchgear and industrial software. Its portfolio ranges from standard products for the manufacturing and process industry to solutions for whole industries and systems that encompass the automation of entire automobile production facilities and chemical plants. As a leading software supplier, Industry Automation optimizes the entire value added chain of manufacturers -- from product design and development to production, sales and a wide range of maintenance services.

Note: Siemens and the Siemens logo are registered trademarks of Siemens AG. Solid Edge, D-Cubed, Parasolid and NX are trademarks or registered trademarks of Siemens Product Lifecycle Management Software Inc. or its subsidiaries in the United States and in other countries. All other trademarks, registered trademarks or service marks belong to their respective holders.

October 09, 2008Reviewed by 'Sai Prasad'When traditional Feature History based modeling is combined with inference / rule based engine it created quite an interesting set of possibilities in creating 3D CAD geometry. The Direct Modeling techniques offered by Siemens was always considered an outsider to the above technique. It will be quite interesting to see how a direct update of the 3D model can synchorize the knowledge rules embedded in the geometry.